by Cat Clarke
I clear my throat, and Hayes repeats the question. How am I feeling this morning?
“I’m more interested in how you’re feeling this morning.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand. I’m looking for a quote—something short and snappy but heartfelt; you know the sort of thing.”
“And I’m looking for a quote from you. Something about how you were wrong about Laurel and wrong to write all that stuff about my family….You know the sort of thing.”
Dad’s gesturing for me to hang up the phone. Reporters have never been allowed to talk to me, or even print a picture with me in it without blurring out my face. The one or two times they tried, they found themselves on the receiving end of a hefty lawsuit. That was another thing Hayes criticized my parents about—their “litigious nature.”
“Okay, I see what you’re saying.” She doesn’t sound angry. “I was wrong about Laurel. And I’m obviously delighted I was wrong….” I smile, triumphant. “But I stand by everything I wrote about the police and your parents.”
Bitch. I want to say something clever—something that will cut her deeply. I want her to know how much pain she’s caused my family—as if the pain of losing Laurel wasn’t enough—and I want her to feel bad about it. But Dad saves me the trouble by grabbing the phone from my hand and shouting expletives before hanging up and throwing it on the bed in disgust. “There. See if they’ll print that.”
I’ve never heard my father say some of those words. It’s kind of cool.
“It was her, wasn’t it?” he asks softly.
I nod.
He puts his arm around me. “We’re not going to let them ruin today, okay? This is our day.”
I nod again. “I’m going to take a shower.”
—
What do you wear to meet the sister you thought was dead? My closet here only has a few things in it, so my options are limited. I settle for gray jeans, Converse, and a black T-shirt; I want to look like me.
Michel tells me I look great, which can’t be true because I’ve hardly slept. He manages to keep a cheerful sort of chatter going all through breakfast, ignoring Dad’s phone buzzing every few minutes. I wish he were coming with us.
In the elevator, Dad tells me to keep my head down in the car. When the car pulls out of the garage, the flashes go off and photographers crowd around, shouting and jostling one another and risking getting run over just to get a picture of us. I stare at the dashboard, where the plastic nodding dog I gave Dad for Christmas a few years ago is nodding away as if he approves of this madness.
Dad manages not to run over anyone’s toes—he must be feeling charitable. And then we’ve left them behind and we’re on our way to the hotel. I keep checking in the mirrors in case any photographers are following us on motorcycles, but it looks like we’re in the clear.
Dad drums his fingers on the steering wheel until I ask him to stop. He apologizes and I apologize and he asks why I’m apologizing. Then we both laugh nervously.
“Are you okay, love? You look a bit green around the gills.”
I look up at the sky, gray and heavy; I wouldn’t be surprised if it started snowing. “I hope she likes me.”
Dad barks out a laugh. “Like you? She’s going to love you! She’s your sister!” And weirdly enough, this does make me feel better.
There are no photographers waiting outside the hotel or hanging around the lobby, which is something to be grateful for. A red-haired woman in a too-tight black suit hurries over to us as soon as we enter. Her gold badge identifies her as GILLIAN CROOK, ASSISTANT MANAGER. She is very keen for us to know how very, very happy she is for us and how honored she is to have “Little Laurel” staying here. She shakes Dad’s hand for far too long, then she hugs me, which is awkward because I make no effort to hug her back. I don’t tend to go around hugging random hotel assistant managers.
Gillian Crook starts crying because it’s all too much for her, thinking about Little Laurel being reunited with her family here in her hotel (of all places!). She just knows it’s a story she’ll tell her grandchildren one day (not that she’s even married yet!), and I feel sorry for those hypothetical grandchildren. Dad and I nod as politely as we can and try to leave her behind, but she says there’s someone we have to talk to before heading upstairs.
Gillian leads us over to the bar, empty except for a woman tapping away on a laptop. She stands when she hears us approach. She’s around thirty years old, with shoulder-length, curly brown hair and the type of face you forget as soon as you turn away. Her name is Maggie Dimmock. She’s the counselor who flew up from London last night. Maggie is a specialist in “family reunification,” which is a real thing and not something someone made up yesterday because no one has a clue how to deal with a situation like this.
We sit down with her, and Gillian Crook hovers nearby until Maggie gives her an even more pointed look than she did the first three times. Maggie tells us her qualifications as if she’s trying to prove something. Apparently she flew over to Switzerland last year to deal with a case “remarkably similar to this one.” Except it wasn’t all that similar at all, really, because the Swiss girl had only been gone for two years. You know your perspective is pretty messed up when you think two years is hardly any time at all for a girl to be away from her family.
Maggie Dimmock has already spent a couple of hours with Laurel, which doesn’t seem fair when I haven’t even seen her yet. Maggie says she’s a remarkable young woman, and Dad nods along with everything she says. She’ll be having sessions with Laurel every day for the next week or so, as well as with the four of us together. It’s all about creating a “smooth transition.” She says that we can’t expect everything to be hunky-dory straightaway. She sounds like a kids’ TV host, full of enthusiasm and good intentions. I feel sorry for her.
Maggie talks some more, but I’ve stopped listening. I just want to see my sister. I want to get this over with. The nerves are too much to bear.
—
Dad and I take the elevator to the top floor. Apparently the hotel insisted that Laurel stay in the presidential suite. No doubt they’re hoping for some good publicity out of this.
There’s one more obstacle between us and Laurel—Sergeant Dawkins, our family liaison officer, is waiting outside the room. I’ve known Sergeant Dawkins—Natalie—for years. I like her, but I just want to get inside that room. Still, I let her hug me, because she’s been through this whole thing with us from the start. This is a big day for her, too.
“She’s so looking forward to seeing you, Faith.” I wish people would stop saying that.
Sergeant Dawkins takes Dad to one side and they whisper. There’s always something they don’t want me to know or don’t think I can handle. I’m so used to it happening that it barely even registers anymore.
And then Dad’s knocking on the door, and Mom answers it so fast I’m sure she must have been standing right there all along, and Dad’s hand is on my shoulder, almost but not quite pushing me into the room. And I’m standing in front of my sister.
I have a sister again.
She hesitates for a second, this new sister of mine. Then she runs over from the window, and she hugs me tightly, and I stagger backward a couple of steps, but she doesn’t let go. Mom and Dad hang back for a second or two; they have the biggest smiles on their faces. I’ve never seen them smile like that before. They can’t resist for long, and they soon pile in so that I’m right in the middle of this big, laughing, crying, disbelieving family hug. There’s a wholeness, a completeness, a certain symmetry to it. It amazes me.
After a while, we disentangle ourselves and step back and just look. Mom and Dad are looking from Laurel to me and back again. Laurel is staring at me as if she can’t quite believe I’m real, and I’m staring at her because I can’t believe how beautiful she is even though I always knew she’d be beautiful. I had a picture in my head of what she would look like, and it never quite matched the age-progressed pictures the police came up wit
h, but it was actually pretty close to the girl standing in front of me.
She’s a couple of inches taller than me—about five foot seven. Her hair is a little longer than shoulder-length; it looks like she cut it herself. Her eyes are very blue. She’s not wearing any makeup and her skin is slightly greasy and sallow, but her beauty still astounds me. The scar looks a little like a silvery white teardrop on her cheekbone.
She’s skinny—the hoodie and jeans she’s wearing are hanging off her. That’s when I realize that the clothes she’s wearing are mine. There’s nothing I can say about that without it sounding petty and wrong. I want to make a joke about it—because it’s such a classic sisterly sort of thing (Moooooom, she borrowed my jeans without asking again!)—but this probably isn’t the right time. I don’t mind that she’s wearing my clothes, but it would have been nice if Mom had bothered to ask me. Knowing her, she’s already got some big shopping spree planned for Laurel. She’s always wanted a daughter to go shopping with, and I have never been that daughter.
“You’re so grown up!” Laurel smiles through her tears.
Dad’s got his phone out of his pocket. He wants to take a photo. Laurel and I stand in front of the sofa, and she puts her arm around my shoulder, and we smile for the camera. We have to keep smiling a little too long while Dad presses the wrong button and accidentally starts recording a video of us, but he manages to get it right eventually.
“Right,” Mom says. “We’re going to go out and get some coffee and leave you girls to it.”
I’m panicking slightly at the thought of being left alone with Laurel, but at the same time I know it will be easier without Mom and Dad here, watching everything, trying to record it for posterity. They dispense more hugs before they leave. It looks like we’re going to be a huggy sort of family from now on.
—
Laurel curls up in one corner of the sofa, tucking her bare feet beneath her. I sit on the armchair next to the sofa. I haven’t had a chance to look around the presidential suite, but it’s obviously bigger than my house.
Laurel notices me looking around. “It’s too big.”
“What?”
She fiddles with the cuffs of her (my) hoodie. “I wish it were smaller. I’m used to…”
Oh god. She’s been locked up in a basement for thirteen years. It stands to reason that big spaces would freak her out. “You should say something. Tell Mom. They’ll get a smaller room for you, no problem.”
Laurel shakes her head. “Mom really likes it.”
It is unbelievably odd to hear someone else calling my mother “Mom.” And I can’t get my head around the fact that I am sitting in this ridiculously opulent hotel room, talking to my sister.
“This is weird, isn’t it?” Sometimes it’s just best to get these things out in the open and acknowledge the awkwardness before someone else does.
Laurel smiles. “It’s definitely weird.”
We sit in silence for a moment or two. Laurel stares at the door, and I wonder if she’s trying to work out when Mom and Dad will be back. Maybe she’d have preferred it if they’d stayed. They seem to know the right things to say and do; clearly I do not.
“I’m glad you’re back.” It’s a banal thing to say, but it’s important that I say it out loud. It’s important that she hears it. Laurel smiles again. Her teeth are perfect. “Your teeth are perfect.”
“Um…thanks?” She’s looking at me as if that was a weird thing to say, probably because it was a weird thing to say.
“Sorry…I was just…It’s just that I was thinking that you haven’t been to the dentist, and here’s me going every six months or something and having fillings and braces and…Okay, I’m going to stop talking now. Sorry.” What is wrong with me?
Laurel doesn’t look at me like I’m crazy. She doesn’t look at me at all. “I brushed my teeth for five minutes, three times a day. Mouthwash and flossing, too. It was one of his rules.”
Oh god. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s okay. I’m going to have to get used to talking about it, aren’t I? I only brushed my teeth for a couple of minutes last night. Same this morning. And I haven’t flossed.” Finally a ghost of a smile appears on her face, and I breathe again. “You don’t need to worry, you know. I can talk about it. About…him.”
If the things that had happened to her had happened to me, I don’t think I’d ever talk about them again. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through.” Yet more banality.
“Good. You shouldn’t have to.” She goes to bite her nails and then stops herself, tucking her hands inside the sleeves of the hoodie. I wonder if that was another one of his rules. “Anyway, I want to hear about you. I’ve got some catching up to do, haven’t I? How about you tell me every single thing you’ve done in the last thirteen years?” She laughs at the alarmed look on my face. “I’m kidding! Sort of.”
“Um…where do you want me to start?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.” She stares off into space again, and I’m not sure where she’s gone, but I’m almost certain I should be glad that I can’t follow her there. “You know…no matter how bad things got, I was always glad he took me and not you. Whenever I was scared or couldn’t sleep, I thought about you.”
I’ve read articles asking that question: why her and not me? Most people seem to think it came down to age or hair color. I was four years old with brown hair; Laurel was six years old with blond hair.
I used to have recurring nightmares of a man standing over the two of us. The sun was always behind him, so his face was in shadow. He would lead Laurel away by the hand, and I would go back to playing in the sand. Sometimes I would run after them and ask for an ice cream, and the man would take my hand, and the three of us would walk down the road together.
“Have you still got that night-light?”
I have no idea what she’s talking about, and she can tell from the look on my face.
“The penguin one? With the red hat and scarf? You had this weird name for it, but I can’t seem to…”
All of a sudden, I can picture it, crystal clear. “Egg!” Laurel nods vigorously, eyes bright, and we both laugh at the miracle of a shared memory.
How could I have forgotten about Egg? For years I couldn’t get to sleep without that penguin’s tummy glowing from the corner of the room. Egg was the only thing protecting me from the monster under the bed and the monster in the closet. And then he was the only thing protecting me from the monster in the front yard—the one who led little girls away by the hand and made their families sad.
Laurel tells me that she used to think about Egg when she couldn’t sleep, when she felt suffocated by the darkness around her. She would try to picture him in her mind, focusing on every little detail. “Sometimes it felt like I could actually see him—but only if I concentrated really, really hard. Those were the best times. I was able to go to sleep then. But sometimes I couldn’t quite remember the exact shade of red of his hat, or the shape of his beak didn’t feel right.”
I nod as if I understand. And I do understand, in a theoretical sort of way. But I’ll never truly understand what she’s been through, will I? Even if she was to tell me every single thing that happened to her, I will never really know. I’ll never know what it’s like to be locked in a pitch-black basement, scared and alone—or even worse: scared and not alone.
Laurel is disappointed that I have no idea what happened to the night-light, so I tell her we’ll look for it when she comes home. “Home,” she says. “I like the sound of that.”
She asks me about school, and it all sounds amazing and interesting to her because she can barely even remember going. I ask her if she can read, then I apologize because it seems like an insensitive question. Laurel doesn’t mind, though. She learned to read and write. She learned pretty much all the same subjects I did. I ask how that’s possible, not bothering to hide my skepticism.
“He taught me.”
She nods. “He hated ignorance. He said there was no excuse for it.”
“So you had textbooks and everything?”
“Some. Mostly he had his own handwritten notes. A colored folder for each subject.”
It’s too bizarre to get my head around. The idea of this monster—this psychopath—teaching her math and grammar and science. He brought her novels to read, too—but only if she was good. She didn’t go into detail about what being “good” entailed. A couple of years ago, he taught her how to use a computer, saying everyone needed to be able to use computers in the modern world. He wired up an old desktop one for her. It wasn’t connected to the Internet—obviously.
We talk and talk, and gradually I begin to build up a picture of her life for the past thirteen years, and she begins to build up a picture of mine. We swap information, filling in the gaps, asking questions and answering them. I steer clear of anything that I think might upset her, though, which means a lot of my questions aren’t the ones I really want to ask.
Laurel finds it fascinating that I have a boyfriend. She asks lots of questions about Thomas, and I try my best to answer them. She even asks if Thomas and I have had sex. There’s an awkward silence before I tell her the truth. She asks me if I liked it, and I say I sort of did. Then she goes quiet, and I say maybe we should talk about something else.
She shakes her head fiercely and says, “I hate it. I never want to do it again. It’s disgusting.” She looks so intense and angry, and I want to kill the man who made her feel like this. No—I want to hurt him, inflict the worst sort of pain, and then kill him. What he did to her doesn’t count as sex. He attacked and violated a little girl in the most horrifying way possible. She must see the difference.